Holiday Gifts #1: Inspiration and Ideas

I inadvertently have found myself in a position where there is an expectation of woodworking gifts for the holidays this year. I guess that’s what I get for posting all my little projects on Facebook where my family can see them.

So, for my father I am going to be making a six-pack beer tote out of mahogany and quarter sawn sycamore. I’m hoping it looks as good as I envision it will when it’s finished. It’s going to have rare earth magnets for catching the bottle caps but I think I might add a little basket at the bottom as well just to have a place to knock them all or in case a magnet misses one. I’ll be filling it with beer as well, of course.

For my mother, I’ll be making Sheila Landry’s rocking reindeer out of curly maple. I started cutting these yesterday actually. I’m also going to make a storage box for them since they’re only going to get pulled out once a year. I was going to make a ribbon box, but I can see that the ribbon might not stand up over time with storage, so instead I’m just going to go with a flat-topped box and maybe put in some kind of wintry or Christmas inlay.

My sister is going to get another Landry design of a set of sled ornaments and hopefully I’ll have time to make a box for those as well.

I’ve also been working on my own designs for ornaments and hope to be posting some of those soon, but I think they’re just going to be for my own tree. Here’s one in progress. I just used clip art and Photoshop brushes for the horse and holly/ribbon and then added the hanger on top to the ribbon and kept it circular like a Christmas ball. I’m going to experiment with other ornament shapes though. This one is made from 1/8” cedar which I don’t think I’ll be working with again on something this small (it measures only 2 inches).